Tag Archives: seed funding

The way the cookie crumbles – Day 135/139

Posted on June 24, 2010 | Leave a comment

The seed funding round for FinderBase was finally launched yesterday. Most of my active readers have received the investor letter. If you haven’t but would like to see it, just contact me directly.

So it all comes down to this.

Due to the tight schedule of this project, the funding round will be closed already next Monday at 4 pm Finnish time. This weekend is the Midsummer so I bet people have better things to worry about than our investment round.

At this point we have about 20,000 € worth of commitments to invest so we’re at least 80,000 € short to make this happen. It all comes down to the last day of my project on Monday. However, if we do get investments during the weekend, I’m happy to report the updated status here.

Happy Midsummer everyone!

Have fun and do things you like most.

As easy as 1-2-3 – Day 123/139

Posted on June 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

Today was an important day in my project. We finally got the answer to the ultimate question:

How can this project end?

As we all know there are two possible outcomes and the shareholders of FinderBase decided today what they mean:

My project will fail. The seed funding round will not be closed if we raise less than 100,000 € (50 % of the target sum).
My project will succeed. The seed funding round will go through.

Who wins if I succeed?

If we think only in terms of cash, the biggest winners here are the guys who have been linking to my blog. If the round fails, my project will end up on the negative side. But if the round goes through, I will get my “million dollars” and these guys will get their affiliate money. And there’s still a lot of money in the budget so anyone can help out by spreading the word.

But how could the round fail? We have the guys at GrowVC helping us out. If you want to be a part of this success story, join the seed funding mailing list and we’ll tell you more.

Investment proposal – Day 122/139

Posted on June 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

To get this project to its goal, we need to see if we have been able to create measurable value in the eyes of investors. With investors I mean anyone who has some money and wants to put it to a good cause.

According to the recent poll, there are at least 34 people who are interested in hearing our investment proposal. So if you want to receive the FinderBase investor brochure, please leave your contact information to this

FinderBase seed funding mailing list.

The investor brochure will be in Finnish. If you’re interested in investing and don’t speak the language, please contact me.

There are no specific rights or any obligations to joining this mailing list.

Money talks – Day 106/139

Posted on May 26, 2010 | 3 comments

Today, I had the opportunity to present FinderBase to a couple of professional investors. Much of our talk was around the business potential of our service.

People tend to over-complicate the talk about money.

I will argue that there is only one right way to talk about money.

It is not the way of worshiping the money. You shouldn’t respect big numbers more than small ones.
It is neither the way of disrespect. You should respect the people with money just like you respect anybody else.
The right way is the neutral way. Money is just money. Numbers on the bank.

So we opened the discussion with the obvious. I said our company is worth 1,8 M€.

Considering that FinderBase.com has only had a handful of paying customers and has less than 300 registered users, the price might sound a bit extreme.

But they listened to what I had to say.

They had good suggestions on what we’d need to do next, most of which we already had executed. They asked whether we allowed bigger investments from a single party and I told them that was negotiable.

This is the way I’d like investor meetings to go.

Neutral about money. Passionate about business.

3 Comments

Posted in Daily entries

Tagged finderbase, funding, investment, money, seed funding, venture capital

Abetti’s pizza principle – Day 100/139

Posted on May 20, 2010 | 3 comments

I have been now writing this blog for 100 days. There have been ups and downs but my project is still standing.

But where is the money?

For some weird reason people keep asking me this. To show where the money is, I’ll quote my favorite professor Pier A. Abetti:

Think of companies like pizzas. Your startup is a whole mini pizza that you own. When you sell a part of it, the pizza becomes bigger. Would you rather own a whole mini pizza or a slice of the bigger pizza?

The lesson here is that the small slice of a bigger company tends to be worth more than the whole smaller company.

So the plan is this:

We have founded a company FinderBase Oyj that owns the FinderBase.com service.
We will arrange an issue of shares for FinderBase Oyj.
We will offer the shares to people who trust us and want to be a part in building a big phenomenon.
This will dilute our own ownership but will grow the company.

Would you be interested in getting our investor brochure?

3 Comments

Posted in Daily entries

Tagged finderbase, investment, investor brochure, money, pier abetti, seed funding, venture capital